Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.
The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.
More and more NGOs are using games. Now's the turn of Unicef. If you go to Unicefgames.org, you can play World Heroes (where you must go around the world, gathering donations) and Halloween Coin Toss (about tossing coins into Unicef charity boxes). The games are simple and cute, targeted to young players. They are similar to the Greenpeace games that we previously discussed here at WCG.
I think that it is not a coincidence that many NGOs start by offering webgames addressed to children. I think it is a natural first step. I hope that eventually, such institutions will offer games for adults, too, more complex and thoughtful. But change takes time, so we'll probably have to wait a few years until we see a change in that direction. Meanwhile, it is still terrific that NGOs are using games for kids!
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